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Q.&A.: Supersizing Desktop Icons

By J.d. Biersdorfer May 13, 2010 7:38 amMay 13, 2010 7:38 am

Q.

I’m having a hard time seeing the icons on the computer. Is there way to make them bigger?

A.

You can easily make desktop icons larger by right-clicking on the desktop area. Then select the View menu and slide the mouse over to the submenu, where you can choose Large, Medium or the smaller Classic size for your desktop icons. You can also use the scroll wheel on the mouse to do the resizing on the desktop — just hold down the Control key and nudge the scroll wheel on the mouse to make the icons larger or smaller.

To change the size of the text on the screen, go to the Start menu to Control Panel. Click on the Appearance and Personalization area and under Display, click on “Make text and other items larger or smaller” to open a box with options for increasing the size of the objects on screen — without changing your screen resolution.

To change the size of the Finder’s desktop icons and fonts on recent versions of Mac OS X, choose View from the Finder menu and select View Options. In the View Options box, you can adjust the size and spacing of the Mac’s desktop icons, as well as the size of the text labels underneath the icons.

The current version, Mac OS X 10.6, includes a slider for adjusting icon sizes when using the Finder’s icon view; icons on Mac laptops with multitouch trackpads can also be resized by using the same sort of finger-pinch and zoom gestures Apple uses on its touchscreen devices.

You can also temporarily zoom in on part of the screen. On a Windows 7 system, the tool is called Magnifier, and Microsoft offers more information on using it at its Web site. On the current version of Mac OS X, you can turn on the Zoom feature in the System Preferences; Apple also has instructions.

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